A bloodsucker and a bat-shit berserker

Creeper- Morbius, the Living Vampire

I have never read Steve Ditko’s very brief 1968 DC series Beware the Creeper, which alongside Hawk and Dove, followed his work for Charlton Comics. But I’ve read stories featuring the Creeper, whose character design is as striking as every Ditko creation. No one can ever decide whether Jack Ryder can control his Creeper persona, or whether his transformation drives him bat-shit insane. I think the latter option would be infinitely preferable: wouldn’t the idea of a Joker who goes after crooks seem to present endless story possibilities?

I only recently remembered Morbius, a character created indirectly in 1971 to challenge the Comic Code's then-two decade long ban on referencing the supernatural. Morbius arrived at his vampiric qualities through scientific means, and so the Code could not fuck with Marvel. Soon, horror characters could be pushed on kids again by Marvel and other publishers. Which, happily, is the way it should be.

Commonalities:
Scary, keep-‘em-guessing, struggling-with-bloodlust-and insanity fellows both: are they evil? Are they nuts? Are they murderous?

Differences:
I reckon these two line the fuck up!

Alternate histories:

CR: Jack Ryder is stricken with a rare blood disease, and attempts to cure himself via an experimental treatment. Instead, the procedure turns Ryder into a yellow-skinned, green haired super strong acrobat with maniacal and nearly homicidal tendencies. Assuming the identity “the Creeper,” he initially opposes the Blue Beetle, although he more recently has exhibited more self-control.

MO: Michael Morbius is wounded by thugs, and is injected with a serum that turns him into a seeming “living vampire,” complete with chalk-white skin and fangs. He then vacillates between his normal form and that of his occasionally deadly vampiric persona: although he has often worked with other superhuman operatives, few can count on whether Morbius is relatively stable or insane with bloodlust.